All Things Beautiful

I've mentioned here before that I don't care much for fruits and vegetables.I've also mentioned how I need to eat much more of them.

Complex carbs. It's what we all need... and what I need to find a way to get into my diet more and more.

I should rephrase my disdain however, by saying that I like vegetables when they are prepared nicely. And by nicely I mean not just chopped up on a plate...cause it has to be pretty incredible dip to make that appetizing day after day.

 It should also be stated that I'm  also  quite done with worrying about being a purist. I know raw is the healthiest way to eat them...but I just don't eat them that way ( I mean I do...just not on a daily basis), so I'd rather they be cooked than go uneaten.


I have spent quite a lot of time in the past two years getting all lathered up about how much I wish I could have shelves of preserved this and that grown locally and organically in my own garden or some other worthy person's, ...but alas, it's just not going to happen.

 I may get a small number of tomato plants or some lettuce going again, but last year's container garden of vegetable plants looked a little...um...low brow ( for lack of better term that won't offend people who come from certain less desirable neighborhoods)...and in the interest of making our house as desirable as possible for market value this summer...that just won't due.


And again I'd rather just be eating a vegetable or fruit at this point no matter where it came from.

I noticed one day that my kids will eat their vegetables willingly if they come in soup form. So I give them a lot of soup.

I decided I may as well start making up some soups for myself and here is what I came up with....

Here is a much more sophisticated recipe with a much classier photograph too.

I use my hand blender and blend the whole thing smooth which makes it extra delicious and fulfilling somehow.

If I were you, I'd grate a little cheese on top and enjoy it with whole wheat crackers; rejoicing in the fact that you are eating much more broccoli than you would be if you'd chopped that bad boy up and just tried to chew it down like a mini tree mulcher...
Anyways, I've been coming up with all sorts of ways to include more and more servings of vegetables into my diet over the last few weeks and I think I might start trying to post them here if anyone is interested. I feel like a queen eating all these delicious foods every day for my lunches; it's even become something I look forward to.  I'm a big fan of anything that only needs to be prepared once and then sits in the fridge patiently waiting for me to devour it over the course of the next few days, so that's what most of my ideas are. If you also have any ideas, I'd be grateful to have them shared here too!

It's been a week of treats here at our house. I summoned the energy to do some baking with the kids in honor of Valentines day. I thought it might be nice to share with you all our favorite chocolate chip recipe (made extra special by the addition of pink food coloring)

Where I got this recipe, I really have no idea. It crossed paths with me when I was in University, right around the time one needs a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies to snack on while cramming for exams.
I did not actually possess any implements for actually baking the cookies back then. I used a dutch oven as my mixing bowl and purely estimated the measuring of ingredients but even then, by golly they were good. (maybe even better).

Do people still do this with the batter beaters? I thought afterwards maybe I shouldn't have given them. Even though the eggs came from the best farm chickens we know.... still....
the pictures are cute, are they not?


1 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups chocolate chips. We mix it up and add 1 cup chocolate chips and 1/2 cup each of white chocolate chips and butterscotch chips.

Preheat oven to 350 (175 C)
In a large mixing bowl cream butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla (add the food coloring at this point if you want colored cookies)

In a separate bowl combine flour, baking soda, and salt.  Mix dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Stir in all those chocolate chips

Drop batter by spoonful onto not stick cookie sheets and bake for 6-8 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow to cool for five minutes at least before scarfing them down.

Tis the season for citrus and I am loving it let me tell you. I sadly realized while in conversation with my sister (it's amazing how many revelations I have in conversation with those blessed sisters of mine) that I fall drastically short when it comes to recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. As a child, vegetables were my mortal enemy and I learned to swallow down the bites that were part of supper like pills with my glass or water. Fruit was hardly better. It always seemed mushy, bruised and overripe and because the rules were that a piece had to be picked and eaten from the fruit basket everyday, I'm afraid more often than not, the spotty bananas and brown apples met creative demises far from my mouth and digestive tract. (my stepmother still doesn't know to this day that they were often chucked over the back fence and their peels laid carefully in the garbage can to hide our deception).

So, fast forward 20 some years and here I am still wincing at the thought of munching down on the fruit bowl or the veggie crisper...

Alas my health is much better when I am consistently chowing down on carbs of the more complex variety and a change needed to occur.

"Just pick the few fruits or veggies that you do like and make sure to eat those every day" was my sister's advice and it was good advice. Besides I am actually allergic to a large selection of tree borne fruits and therefore what is available to me is slim pickins.

First on my list was grapefruit, I actually do enjoy it and because I eat it with a spoon there isn't any sticky fingers to deal with like there always is with oranges (which is also an issue with me left over from my childhood disdain of having messy hands...sigh)

Every morning these days, a grapefruit is sliced and sprinkled with just a touch of sugar, scored and then spooned up. It'd delightful. and just the fact that I'm starting the day off with fruit makes me feel good about myself. (and that's before I get into how much more water I now drink or the 1.4 miles I run every morning...yussss!)

And the kidlets have noticed too....unfortunately.  My kids like many manners of fruit but they have also decided they like grapefruit and it's become a fight to get it all into my own body before they start pleading at my elbows with those giant eyes for a "red orange" of their own.

I have begun to hover protectively over my grapefruit because because let's face it, I am a sucker for those eyes and well what mother doesn't want to give her children more fruit...

I certainly don't want history to repeat itself, I want my children to want their fruits and veggies so I guess it's a good thing...although veggies is still a different story for the kids. Just last night their was battle to get my daughter to eat her zucchini and I was tempted to teach her the trick of swallowing it like a pill with her water...but I didn't. I shoveled it into her mouth while she screwed her eyes closed...and then gagged until it was finally chewed and swallowed, but it was chewed and swallowed so I guess that's what matters..

I think trail mix in the bulk bins at the grocery store is somewhat horrid.
The stale taste, the dried little chunks of mystery fruit, the peanut salt that makes it's way onto everything

and the price is just a little horrid too.

So we made our own. I picked up a couple ingredients while out shopping but everything else came from what was in the pantry already and somehow those ingredients aren't as stale and nasty when you buy them individually; probably because they get bought more often and therefore replaced, where as the bins of trail mix are kind of like a fruit cake that sits and ages...(although some people actually like old fruitcake which is kind of crazy to me...no offense all you old fruitcake lovers...)

Anyway, I digress...

We came home and we chopped up all manner of apricots, prunes and raisins. We dumped in unsalted roasted peanuts and sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds and granola clusters. For kicks we threw in the last of the boxes of cereal that were hanging out in the depths of the pantry shelf and for color and the sheer joy of it, we threw in the mini m and ms that we meant to use to decorate a gingerbread house and never did.


The trail mix was a huge hit. I put it all in a big airtight bin and now my little snackers nibble away at bowls of it all day. They come to me begging for snacks every half an hour and in the past where I used to have to rummage and forage about lost for ideas of what to continuously feed them, now I simply point at the large airtight bin and minutes later we are all satisfied.


Yes, I would say this is the face of  trail mix satisfaction.

Do you have a favorite trail mix combination for your family too?